How to drive traffic to your blog

Not sure how useful this is, but based on examining my blog stats on WordPress.com, here are some observations I came up with that seem related to driving traffic to my site (not that I am Robert Scoble or anything..and what is alot for me is really not much). But they are practical tips.

Here they are:

• Make it easy for search engines to find you: use searchable words in your blog title. I used to use interesting titles. Now I think about how to put as many searchable words in the title (and hence the URL) as possible so search engines will fine it.
• Make the first sentence and the first paragraph catchy: search engine results (like Google) will have the first line or first paragraph highlighted in the search result. Make that something people want to read and therefore clickable.
• Comment on general interest topics: I wrote an entry on the social effects of Facebook. People search for that alot it seems.
• Comment on seasonal topics: like Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. People will be searching for things like that.
• Comment on things in the news: new media, people in the news, new technology. People will be searching for new things. I am a big fan of Blade Runner, so I blogged about the latest version of it coming out, and I get lots of hits on that.
• Offer helpful advice: Ok, I don’t know how helpful this is, but I used to have alot of people asking me for wine advice, so I blogged about how to find good cheap wine at the LCBO (i.e. the liquor stores of Ontario). I get alot of hits due to that, and if you google “cheap wine lcbo” I come out ahead of some established wine writers in Ontario. Go figure. I should give up this IT gig and write on wine for a living. 🙂
• Use Images: I try to use images on my blog entries to make them more appealing (and give credit where it is due). But I also get alot of hits as a result of images.google.com
• Write on offbeat topics: easier said than done, I know. I once wrote a blog entry on using a blackberry as a flashlight. I get at least 1 person a day searching on that.
• Comment on sites with automatic trackback: some blogs like those at the nytimes.com and other places have automatic trackback. If you comment on those sites and put a link on your page, you may show up on their site.
• Include a pointer to your blog whenever you can. 🙂